Sat Ma­haraj

In the News­day of Feb­ru­ary 13, page ten, the head­line read Bhadase would have been PM, writ­ten by George Al­leyne. The writer drew a num­ber of con­clu­sions about the late Bhadase Sagan Maraj who was founder of Peo­ple's De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (PDP) and found­ing Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al of Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha of Trinidad and To­ba­go Inc.

As a young man Bhadase grew up on Sagan Street at Ca­roni Vil­lage and be­longed to the same age group of my fa­ther and un­cle. I mar­ried his el­dest daugh­ter Shan­ti which was all arranged by our vil­lage pun­dit Kr­ish­na Ma­haraj, who be­came fa­mous for re­fus­ing the na­tion's high­est award, the Trin­i­ty Cross.

In many re­spects I was close enough to Bhadase to ap­pre­ci­ate his strengths and al­so his weak­ness­es.In his col­umn Al­leyne wrote, "Had the Colo­nial of­fice, urged on by the right wing Par­ty of Po­lit­i­cal Progress Groups (POPPG), not post­poned the gen­er­al elec­tion sched­uled for 1955, in a bid to block the Bhadase Sagan Maraj (PDP) from win­ning the elec­tion, there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Maraj would have been T&T's first Chief Min­is­ter and Pre­mier as well as Prime Min­is­ter.

"Iron­i­cal­ly, it was the ex­ten­sion of the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil by one year which would give rise to then Deputy Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Caribbean Com­mis­sion, Dr Er­ic Williams' re­sign­ing from the Com­mis­sion and along with oth­er lead­ing T&T thinkers of the day form­ing and launch­ing the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), which would go on to win the post­poned gen­er­al elec­tion of Sep­tem­ber 24, 1956.

"It is the­o­ret­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble that the PDP which won the sec­ond largest num­ber of votes in the 1956 elec­tion would have won the elec­tion had it been held in 1955 and Bhadase would have been ap­point­ed the then British colony's first Chief Min­is­ter."Al­leyne al­so re­ferred to Bhadase's ad­dic­tion to the drug pethi­dine, and he quot­ed Dr Win­ston Ma­habir, for­mer Min­is­ter of Health un­der the PNM: "The av­er­age dose for med­i­c­i­nal pur­pos­es is 50 to 100 mgs, every six hours."

Dr Ma­habir con­tin­ued, "At the time, how­ev­er, Maraj's av­er­age dai­ly con­sump­tion of the drug ex­ceed­ed 7,000 mil­ligrams." Adding, "He (Maraj) had reached the stage where he need­ed 300 mgs every hour of the day".I was wit­ness to Bhadase's first-time use of pethi­dine. It was dur­ing the Fed­er­al Elec­tions of 1958 and he at­tend­ed a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in south Trinidad ear­li­er one night.

We all re­turned to the Crest Cin­e­ma on South­ern Main Road, Curepe, op­po­site to the Bomb News­pa­per. This lo­ca­tion, on the steps of the cin­e­ma, was where the po­lit­i­cal faith­ful gath­ered at nights.At about 1 am, when a friend of Bhadase, Dr Mooni­har (de­ceased), stopped and in­quired from Bhadase why he was not yet at home.He told the doc­tor that he was hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty sleep­ing. The doc­tor ad­min­is­tered the first shot in­to the sys­tem of a phys­i­cal­ly pow­er­ful man who was a wrestler.

The Bhadase I knew nev­er drank and he nev­er used any drug. This gi­ant of a fig­ure went on to win the Fed­er­al Elec­tion, de­feat­ing Er­ic Williams' PNM six seats to four. Dr Williams claimed that his de­feat was due to a "hos­tile and re­cal­ci­trant mi­nor­i­ty," and Bhadase Sagan Maraj's health took a rapid de­cline.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion on the Web, "Pethi­dine is in­di­cat­ed for the treat­ment of mod­er­ate to se­vere pain, and is de­liv­ered as a hy­drochlo­ride salt in tablets, as a syrup, or by in­tra­mus­cu­lar, sub­cu­ta­neous or in­tra­venous in­jec­tion."For much of the 20th cen­tu­ry, pethi­dine was the opi­oid of choice for many physi­cians; in 1975, 60 per cent of doc­tors pre­scribed it for acute pain and 22 per cent for chron­ic se­vere pain."

Bhadase made ef­forts to "kick" the pethi­dine habit while the mus­cles in both arms de­te­ri­o­rat­ed due to re­peat­ed in­jec­tions of the drug.To­geth­er with then Fed­er­al Sen­a­tor Dr Om­ah Ma­har­jh, he trav­elled to the Unit­ed States for med­ical help.He even vis­it­ed the Unit­ed King­dom on a num­ber of oc­ca­sions.In the end Bhadase was able to beat the pethi­dine ad­dic­tion on his own but by then his po­lit­i­cal star had fall­en, nev­er to rise again.

The big man died on 21 Oc­to­ber, 1971, and was cre­mat­ed by open pyre on the bank of the Ca­roni Riv­er. He left a lega­cy that will be dif­fi­cult to em­u­late.

Sat­narayan Ma­haraj

Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al

Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha